Life Lessons, via Indians

When Hollywood came calling with an offer to star in a movie, Native American rap artist Litefoot--a young man who was already a folk hero within the network of Indian tribes nationwide--made a promise to himself.

“I decided that whatever they offered, even if it was all the money in the world, I would not take the role if it went against what I was teaching on the reservations,” he said. “I’ve spent too many months and years going to our people and encouraging our youth to be proud of their culture and proud of who we are as Indian people. If I were to take an acting role that would go against that, well . . . let’s just say there are too many children to whom I can place names and faces in my mind, and my doing that would hurt them.”

Litefoot needn’t have been so concerned. He and other Indian actors have found Hollywood in a high-minded mood these days. Bowing to social pressure, and always quick to pick up on a trend, filmmakers are taking unprecedented steps to be politically correct in presenting Native Americans.

In a spate of summer family films--”The Indian in the Cupboard” (opening July 14), “Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home” (July 21), and Disney’s current “Pocahontas”--Native Americans have are no longer being portrayed as a faceless menace or the long-suffering noble brave. Instead, they have taken on the role of the sage teacher of life’s lessons.

“Sure the image of Native Americans is changing and I think the Native American actors have a lot to do with it,” said August Schellenberg, who will again star as the Haida Indian Randolph in the sequel to “Free Willy.”

He cited an instance while working on the 1991 film “Black Robe,” directed by Bruce Beresford. “There were scenes where they had the [Algonquian] Indians urinating in their food bowls and I said this is unacceptable, that it was nothing more than Jesuit propaganda,” Schellenberg said. “And they changed it.”

Thanks to such input, “filmmakers are seeing Indians as intelligent people,” he added. “The Stepin Fetchit image is a thing of the past.”

Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota Sioux who is the voice of Chief Powhatan in “Pocahontas,” said the original script painted the Indian warrior Kocoum as a “bloodthirsty savage calling for war.

“I explained to Disney executives that there isn’t a society on Earth that has such a character,” Means said. “And changes were made to make that character a more caring and responsible person. I believe the result is that when he dies, the audience is forced to ask the question ‘why?’ I think the lesson children learn from it is that innocent people get hurt in war.”

Litefoot, who made his acting debut in “The Indian in the Cupboard,” also found similar cooperation from producers Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Jane Startz (and director Frank Oz). Based on the award-winning children’s book by Lynne Reid Banks, the story is about a young boy in New York who discovers that an old cupboard given to him as a gift has the power to turn toy figurines into real people.

“There originally was a Mohawk adviser hired for the film,” said Litefoot, who himself is a member of the Cherokee nation. “But the character in the film, Little Bear, is an Onondaga. I think the filmmakers thought that would be close enough, since Mohawks [as are the Onondagas] are in the six nations that are Iroquois. I explained that there was a hell of a lot of difference between Iroquois and Onondaga.”

The filmmakers listened and agreed to hire an Onondaga adviser who helped mold Little Bear into a truer representation of an 18th-Century Onondaga brave. “From the bottom of my feet to the top of my bald head [yes, he had to shave his head for the role], all the tattooing, the dropped earlobes, the leggings, the moccasins, were all Onondaga in 1761,” Litefoot said.

In addition, Little Bear--who appears to stand three inches tall in the film--is a complex character who could be strong, powerful, sometimes arrogant and yet caring.

“I had been obsessed with this novel for a long time,” said one of the film’s producers, Jane Startz, “and especially with the character of Little Bear. I found him to be a young man who had a freshness and zeal and joie de vivre that a lot of young people have and yet he could talk to Omri [the boy in the story, portrayed by Hal Scardino] as perhaps a wiser, older brother. This is a very textured character and while his cultural identity is part of who he is, it is only a part of his identity.”

Producer Lauren Shuler-Donner, who worked on both “Free Willy” films, says that the filmmakers did not set out to make a statement about Native Americans when they created the Randolph character in 1993.

“He was the wiser, older male who befriended Jesse but was rebellious enough to agree to set Willy free,” she said. “And since the movie took place in the Pacific Northwest, we knew that part of that population was made up of Native Americans.”

Schellenberg, who has the distinction of being the only Native American to play a contemporary Indian in this trilogy of films, is both Swiss and Mohawk. In the sequel, his character has now gone on to work with the Orca Institute, where he helps track pods of whales.

“I think Hollywood has migrated to these characters because they are looking for three-dimensional human beings,” Means said. “And as long as it’s successful, they’ll keep doing it.”

Others are less optimistic. UCLA film history professor Angela Aleiss, who has extensively studied Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans, says the current wave of Indian-themed films (which she dates back to Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves”) is nothing more than a cycle the industry went through in the 1970s.

“Unfortunately, [the current] films probably represent the last that will feature Indians for a while,” she said. “We’re in the downside of this cycle and Native American themes are now being relegated to children’s films and on cable.”